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Wanna keep your toddler busy? Take 'em to the beach! Don't worry, you won't have to leave your house...ok, maybe your backyard. You can make your own beach sand with 2 kitchen staples everyone has in their kitchen. All you need to make it is vegetable oil and flour! That's it! Here's what you need to do:

I found it to be more effective by mixing first with a spatula or wooden spoon so your hands don't have to get too oily. Then when it seems to be mixed up into the flour, ditch the spoon and get your hands in the mixture.

Keep sifting and separating the "globs" with your fingers until it's a little more dense. If you want to add more oil or flour to make a larger batch, you can, just watch the consistancy so that it's not too cakey. If it is, just add more flour.

Keeping a toddler entertained without grabbing the remote can be exhausting sometimes, and thinking of ideas on the spot isn't easy either. Wanna know why?? Well, here's a quick sample of what happens when you need ideas:

Open laptop..."ooh, I have mail..." check mail... [notifications from Pinterest]..."ooh, I could sooo make that!"....(pinning...pinning...pinning)..."Mom, Mom, Mom....Mom...", "Ok, sorry, you need something to do?...Let me check Pinterest for some awesome ideas."...(pinnning)..."Ooh, I would love to travel there!...(pinning...pinning...pinning....) "Omg! Nutella Waffles??...Yes, please! ...(pinning...pinning...pinning...)

So, I think you know where this is going. (At least, I hope you do...don't make me feel alone here.) Let's just say distraction is the Devil!! Nevertheless, here we are with a boredom buster that ironically, I did not find on Pinterest...I swear...I thought of it all by myself...honestly!

I just grabbed an empty cereal box, poked a bunch of holes with an awl and put it on the floor with a bin of different colored pipe cleaners. If you don't have pipe cleaners in your home, shame on you you can get them at any dollar store in your town (At the dollar stores they are usually called "chenille stems".

I did the first few so he could see how it's done and voila! He sat there for what seemed like at least 45 minutes bending red over blue and yellow through green.

It really was a work of art, I
tell ya! Not to mention, a great activity for the development of gross
motor skills. And to tell you the truth, if you walked in at that time,
you would've seen me on my belly right there beside him. It was actually kinda fun!

Then I went even further and showed him how to make a mini raceway with arches. I removed all the pipe cleaners and arched them from the left side of the box to the right and elevated the box for a quick ramp effect. and he loved seeing the car go down and, of course, crash. This added another 15 minutes or so of me getting things done, (which didn't involve opening a laptop.)

So the next time you finish off your cereal, give this a go, they'll thank you!

If your grill cheese sandwiches could talk, well...they may have an extremely depressing monologue about how you're doing it wrong.

Watch Alton Brown prepare an actual "grilled" grilled cheese sandwich (no, that wasn't a typo) the way the sandwich wishes to be grilled, and prepare yourself for shock and awe. Oh, and you'll need a tray for when you begin to salivate... I'm just sayin'.

I purchased the letter charm from a Party City in my local town for about $2.50, but I did search for these on Party City's website and was unsuccessful (although that may be just the website and is still sold in your local Party City, but if you are unsuccessful, the same style is also available here for full alphabet, for around $16.00 or you can get just the single letters for $ .64. Below is an example of each letter.

By the way, ALL of these belts were purchased at a thrift store for under $2. bucks a piece!

I searched high and low for a Mother's Day Poem or awesome "oooh, this is a good one" mom quote, but to no avail. Well, yes, I found some but ones that sounded like the rest and didn't quite say what I was feeling. I wanted to wish everyone a Happy Mother's Day and was disappointed when I thought I wouldn't find something good enough to post. Then I found this:

Mom, if you are reading this, I want you to know.

No frills. No pink. No lace trim. No fancy scroll work. No strategically placed roses on the corners in groups of threes. No script typography or caligraphy. No tear-jerking lineup of what a mother is or means. No soft filtered image of a mother embracing her child as they kick sand at the beach....

First, I want to introduce a prop idea I came up with a few years back by total default. As you can see below, my Ikea chair broke on the back which made it completely unusable. But I realized the seat part was a perfect circle, thus, making a perfect candidate for a chalkboard. So I searched high and low for my electric screwdriver and finally removed the seat, then tossed the rest in the recycle bin.

"The infographic below illustrates the '10 Commandments of Typography' that could be followed as quite the basics when it comes to selecting fonts. Even though typography is an art and art
is supposed to be subjective with minimal parameters, these rules can
still be applied in order to save time and too much experimentation!
Consider the following 10 statements as the best practices of
typography…"

Ok, I know we are more than halfway through the fourth month of the year, but in hopes of just making you swoon, Look at how utterly adorable these printable calendars are from web designer, Angela over at Hello Cuteness.

I love anything Kawaii and when I came across this bloggers site, I almost died! As if the name Hello Cuteness isn't enough to don it's own set of dimples, the site's overall aesthetic brings on a feeling equal to diving head first into a huge ball pit....no, really. I mean, will you just look at this robot?

Here is just a preview of some of the months:

(Click on images to go to list of calendar downloads)

You can also get a free full page "Year at a Glance" calendar too:

(Click on image below to go to download page)

Click on the button below to go to Hello Cuteness, and check out all her printables, and services.

I stumbled upon one of the most brilliant ideas I've seen in a long while the other day. It's a downloadable wallpaper that actually helps you spring clean your desktop, and makes it fun in the process!

Over at Moritz Fine Designs, Heather created a series of wallpapers to do just that. She has several minimalistic designs. here are just a few for example:

(Click on image to go to download page)

but it was the chalboard series that reeled me in big time. I actually said out loud: 'oh. my. gosh!" It was the answer to my desktop issues I never wanted to deal with. She also shows you how how to download it and add the text to the blank template.

(BLANK TEMPLATE) (WITH TITLES)

My computer guy will vouch for the fact that I'm all over the computer! With downloading new fonts, my blog post ideas, photo editing, inspiring Pinterest posts... I have lots of files to deal with. It was so bad that when I'm on my laptop, before I'd close it, I refused to sign off or minimize my screen to expose the desktop...ugh! But with this wallpaper, I have managed to consolidate and organize all my crap file folders.

And she was right, it honestly took as
little as five minutes, I promise! The cool part is, she gives you the
option of using the text she created or you can download a blank one to
personalize based on what you do regularly on your computer and add the
text yourself on pic monkey (my home away from home) I decided to download the blank one for that very reason. I created
folders that have titles like: "Need to File" so I can go back to it to filter through it
from time to time. My categories were: "Blog Files", "Photos to File",
"Pinterest Posts", "Regulars", and the area at the bottom ended up just a
"Misc" section.

I love anything corkboard themed...(as you can tell...see my blog background?) So I asked her if she had plans of creating one with corkboard and push pins. She sounded pretty interested, so I'll be looking out for that soon! I'll let you know what develops! In the meantime, click the image below to see lots more at Moritz Fine Designs!